The invention generally relates to computer displays and methods of operating computer displays and, more particularly, to displays including a data display region used to display a portion of a stored data file, and a scroll bar display region used to display a scroll bar and to display locations of significant data attributes within the stored data file.
Presently, scroll bars occupy a scroll bar display region or window and allocate a long rectangle of pixels, typically called a shaft, to represent the extent of a stored data file, for example a document. Such scroll bars provide one car, which is a colored or shaded sub-rectangle located within the shaft, and which corresponds to the portion of the data file which is presently being displayed in a data display region or field of the display screen. When the car is moved through the shaft, the data display field is updated to display the data file contents corresponding to the new position of the car. Thus, ordinary scroll bars indicate a single feature of the display, i.e., which portion of the data file is presently being displayed. Other than the relative length of the entire data file, represented by the relative sizes of the shaft and car, no other file-specific information is displayed.